Michael E. O’HanlonDirector of Research - Foreign Policy,Director - Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology,Co-Director - Africa Security Initiative,Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology,Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy
Last year, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the “super committee,” failed to agree on over a trillion dollars in budget cuts. This failure has triggered the looming “sequestration” of an additional $500 billion in defense dollar cuts over the next 10 years, among other mechanical cuts to other parts of the budget. But you wouldn’t know that from the budget released this week by President Barack Obama.
Rather, Obama’s budget numbers hue closely to those in last year’s debt ceiling deal known as the Budget Control Act
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U.S. Defense Spending: The Mismatch Between Plans and Resources
Abstract:President Barack Obama’s defense budget request perpetuates a long-standing pattern of underfunding defense needs. Defense spending is already near historic lows, and the Administration’s budget would reduce it to levels unprecedented during wartime. Furthermore, Congress appears poised to repeat the past mistake of promptly disarming after major combat operations subside. Instead, Congress should maintain current levels of defense spending to allow the military to reset and recapitalize. Congress needs to control entitlement growth, domestic spending, and public debt, which are beginning to threaten national security. Congress also needs to reform military compensation to ease strains within the defense budget.
President Barack Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2011 defense budget request[1] would increase the defense topline by between 1 percent and 2 percent in real terms. However, even with this modest in
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Key defense priorities for the next president
With the 2016 U.S. election underway, the transition to the next commander in chief and his or her new team fryst vatten now less than a year off. Amidst these changes at the highest levels of decision-making, a several-front war against extremists continues to flare, and the fara of great-power conflict—once largely thought extinct—again becomes real.
On February 1, Michael O’Hanlon and the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence convened an kunnig panel to chat about the key defense issues facing the next president. Robert Kagan, Brookings senior fellow and author of many books including “The World amerika Made,” was joined bygd Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute, and James Miller, former undersecretary for policy at the Department of Defense.
Getting imaginative about the future
Robert Kagan began the discussion with a historical reminder: In the early 1900s, the idea that great power war was no